


Eyes

by DragonsPhoenix



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Original Work
Genre: Gen, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 21:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21186404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonsPhoenix/pseuds/DragonsPhoenix
Summary: If you've been trained to stand against the darkness but then been told you weren't good enough, how do you react when you face real monsters?





	Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> In the BuffyVerse, I'm fascinated by the idea of Potentials who were never called, who were told they were being trained to save the world and then, once they'd reached a certain age, sent off to live a normal life. Therefore, you don't have to squint very hard to see this as a BuffyVerse story.

Gwen’s eyes had been stolen but she never would have noticed if it weren’t for the woman screaming in the bathroom. And how could she have known that her eyes were gone? They had been replaced after all and if the new eyes were weaker than her original, well, after staring at text for eight hours a day, blurred vision seemed normal especially when everyone suffered from the same complaint.

When Kat ran into the office yelling that Tammy was having some kind of a fit, Shelli told everyone to stay put. Gwen darted after the two of them, calling out that her aunt, a nurse, had taught her some stuff. It was an easier explanation than the truth.

Tammy, who always stood as tall as possible to embrace every inch of her 5’ 1” frame, looked like a rag doll tossed under the sink. Her hands hid her face as she screamed, “My eyes. My eyes!”

Shelli knelt down. “What’s wrong with your eyes? Did you get something in them? Tammy, I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Dropping her hands, Tammy shouted, “You can’t help!” Her brown eyes, red with crying, seemed to belong to a madwoman. “These aren’t my eyes.”

“Of course they’re your eyes,” Kat said from the doorway.

“No. My eyes were blue.”

***

Hours after an ambulance had screamed out of the parking lot with Tammy strapped down in the back, the office still felt unsettled. “After staring at this screen all day, I wouldn’t mind new eyes,” Kat joked. No one replied.

Gwen’s job was tedious but gave her time to think. No one else in the office seemed to remember that Tammy’s eyes had been blue. Gwen had been taught that human minds shied away from the supernatural by changing their memories but she’d never before seen the mass-delusion in action. She’d been raised by a man she only knew by his title: Domine. He’d told her that she might be Chosen and had trained her to fight demons. Gwen had never been Chosen, but all her training railed against allowing innocents to suffer.

She could identify tens of thousands of demons based on appearance, scent, and habits. While twenty-three kinds of demons slurped on the jelly-like vitreous humor between the lens and retina, not one replaced human eyes. Although she couldn’t identify this demon, she could lay out a trap. A quick google taught her that medical students practiced dissection on cow eyes. That would have to do. She had a bit of trouble figuring out which local university had a supply of cow eyes, but she had no trouble breaking into the lab. She didn’t even think to feel guilty. Her training had taught her that killing demons outranked all other concerns.

She made it back to the office before midnight. As she walked through the halls, Gwen felt her skin crawl and wondered if something were watching. She left six cow eyes on the kitchen counter and hid under the table in the breakroom. Forty-five minutes passed before she heard a squelching, the sound of eyeballs popping. The high-pitched chittering that followed sent shivers down her spine and she wished she’d left well enough alone. Yes, she’d been trained for this, but she’d never been Chosen. She didn’t have the power. She shouldn’t have to fight demons. The moment passed. She tightened her fist around her short sword’s grip, stepped out from under the table, and froze.

Slug-like demons, as big as cats with scrawny arms and human-sized eyes, covered the walls. Two slimed across the table. Tammy’s startling blue eyes blinked at Gwen from the first. The other pulled its own eyes from their sockets and rolled them towards her. Gwen could finally identify the demons’ category if not specific breed. Corpus Furem demons replaced failing body parts with those from other creatures. These slug-demons were replacing their own weak eyes with hardier human eyes.

Gwen scanned the room for an escape but found none. While she’d been distracted by the two on the table, the other demons had covered the floor, blocking her exit. She slashed her sword down, sinking a good five inches of blade into the nearest slug-demon. Greenish blood bubbled up and her blade hissed as it dissolved into dripping gunk. Holding the useless hilt, she jumped onto the table.

Dozens of human eyes, dangling from eyestalks, peered over the edge of the table. The slug-demons were climbing up to her. Gwen’s gaze darted around the room, searching for an escape. The far counter, which held spare kitchen supplies, and the wall behind were clear. As Gwen wondered why the slug-demons had avoided that space, her gaze locked onto the salt shaker. Could it be that simple? Salt killed slugs. Perhaps salt boosted by magic could kill the slug-demons. She leaped to the counter, dropping the hilt of her now useless sword as she grabbed for the salt shaker. Scattering salt ahead of her, she leaped back to the table and chanted, “Deficiat marcie et moriar, you bastards.”

The chittering rose to a desperate shriek as the cat-sized creatures shriveled into dark and desiccated things. Desperation drove her out the closest door. Demons that hunted in packs lived in nests of hundreds or more. She’d killed about sixty. As she popped her trunk, she looked back, afraid they’d followed her but the parking lot was empty. She grabbed rock salt to scatter around the building. As she cast the spell again, repeating the chant dozens of times, the chittering of dying demons rose to a crescendo that gradually gave way to silence.

***

She returned to her car and pulled down the sun visor. Some Corpus Furem demons, those that left their prey alive, didn’t hunt new victims but repeatedly harvested body parts from the same small group. Tammy’s eyes had been blue once. Staring into the mirror, Gwen wondered what color her own eyes had been.


End file.
